Posts by AndrewG

Why is ILM such a failure?

Disk is Cheap, and ILM isn't

The only real use for ILM is in companies that have regulatory requirments to ensure data deletion. I went through an analysis last year using a non-HP ILM product and the bottom line always was it never actually paid for itself against just whacking in a bunch of SATA and SAS disk every 6 months.

Information management and things like dashboards sound good to middle management types, but keeping below their budget sounds a lot better to them.

A proper ILM solution requires quotas, rigid attention to file type control and maybe data fingerprinting. All of this can take a little bit out of the Non-IT employees day (you know..the guys that actually are their to make money for the organistation) so however much the IT managers hat propeller spins at the thought..he's never going to get it past anyone on the money making side with an ounce of sense without a fairly draconian business case or playing the "we don't have a choice" card.

TorrentFreak seeking copyright report’s mysterious author

All I can say is....

I never used to download DVD's until I got tired of wading through 10 minutes of rubbish about the perils of piracy that I couldn't skip past.

Anti-religious campaigners smack down census Jedis

I think your confusing religion and morality

Then again, its possible your religion is your morality and you just don't know any better

Isn't that how the crusades got started?

New 'supercritical' generators to boost nuclear output by 50%

Meh

Sounds good at first blush but theres reasons water/steam became the heat transfer agent of choice. Both the US and USSR have tried other liquids with better figures in their nuclear programs (The Sodium reactors on submarines comes to mind) and they always turned out to have the simple drawback of being utter abominations if you considered any situation apart from normal operation. (using the sodium example..if the reactor went cold and you didn't have external heating from another reactor...you were then trying to chip several tons of radioactive metal out from around a nuclear pile..imagine the fun)

Supercritical CO2 sounds cool (just for he sake of annoying global warming people) but what are its characteristics at STP?

Locking antlers with a network Nazi

Sounds like our office where the security guys keep making the domain unadministratable

I've even been told off by the security guys becasue my poor servers refused to accept connections from their security probe servers - aparrently they didn't like my argument that if my corner of the company wasn't accepting connections from their systems because they didn't tell me they were probing, surley I'd passed their test.

Then again, another time when they were able to monitor, they logged 6 months of remote connections to administer workstations all as one afternoons work. Next thing I know my boss is asking me why I'm appearing on the suspicious user report.

TiVo hits pause button in Australia

Tivo Good..Aus VOD crap

Tivo with a digital antannea is brilliant for FTA stuff and a TV with a USB input allows me to watch the stuff that hasn't hit FTA - Although I've been pleasently surprised this year by how quickly US/UK first run stuff is turning up on some FTA channels.

What always amazed me was the crap that Tivo expected you to pay for in the VOD market, In the entire VOD list and over a years looking, I think I've only ever seen about 4 things worth downloading from it.

Punters 'pooh-pooh video on demand'

VOD != Video on Request

I'm in Australia and been a Tivo user for about a year when I moved into a place where Cable was just too dammed hard to get. I don't really watch broadcarst TV anymore, I just use the channel guide once a week to catch what I want to see (broadcast movies) and use season passes for regular programming.

What I thought was interesting in the video was the expectation that they could select a movie and just watch it straight away, I think thats the biggest part of peoples headspace that has to change before VOD is a replacement (either that or gig broadbang everywhere)

When I do use VOD here (and belive me the VOD options for Tivo in Australia suck) you pick a movie, and then go have dinner or go to work or something, secure in the knowledge that it'll be ready for you later, what you can't do is expect it to act like broadcast TV with inifinite channels.

Apple $10k winner hangs up on 'prank caller'

Picture the publicity

Apple Rep phoned up to tell her she won $10K in iStore Produce

She says not interested and hangs up

Apple VP phones up and says..yes, you've won $10K in iStore stuff

She says "ohhhhh" and then hangs up and pulls the phone line out

The cost of beating Apple's shrewd screws? £2

Whoa..whiney geekette alert

She looked good right up to the point where she opened her mouth and all the self entitled whiney paranoia got regergitated from her brain and out her mouth.

BBC rebuilds Civilisation in HD

I always thought another walking with would be good

After walking with the caveman I wouldn've liked to see "walking with the citybuilders" each episode covering a different pre-roman culture or civilisation focussing on what they innovated towards modern civilisation (writing, taxes, agriculture, boating, pets etc.).

Just seemed like a logical follow on

Sacked health care BOFH jailed for revenge hack

Proof positive that the register has commentartds

how many people didn't bother reading the article and just started spouting a $17 million figure was too much?

US Navy achieves '100 mile' hypersonic railgun test shot

Maybe not such a good thing

Even a Mach 5 shell isn't goign to hit a missle or plane thats manourveing at anything more than point blank range. The SM2's and their ilk work so well becasue they are actively guided to the target

Also...I'm reminded of the reaction after HMS Dreadnought was built. I recall a comment was Prior to Dreadnaught England had 3 times the number of 1st line ships than any other navy. After Dreadnought it had 1 more 1st line ship than every other navy.

MP slams ICO for 'lily-livered' Google probe

And dont forget Googles new motto

If you don't like the fact that Google control and can publish all your information on the planet...your free to move to a new one

Great white sharks menace Blighty

Bad tour Groups?

Usually the grea whites spend the summer down here in Oz partying and looking for seals (and mistaking the occasional wetsuited surfer for din dins)

Why they'd visit Britain in the winter is a mystery, unless they've booked a particularly bad tour operator that confused Bondi for Bagnor

Hull man guilty of snooping on hundreds of medical records

Oh Cool

So now theres proof that you can whip through those huge databases that UK poli's have been saying are "Absolutely Secure", collect whatever information you want, and then just walk off the charge by saying you were curious.

Six months suspended is a joke!

Elon Musk plans new Mars rockets bigger than Saturn Vs

why hurry to Mars?

"Spending such a long time far from a planet is a bad idea for astronauts"

Well yeah, unless the planet is Mars...Mars dosn't have a magnetosphere to deflect radiation and a thin thin atmosphere that also dosn't help much (although on the bright side there isn't much secondary radiation to worry about)

I can see trying to reduce total exposure time...but it won't be a case of "wow..we're in martian orbit, someone get the umpire to yell SAFE"

Apple, Google, NASA, and the Rainbow connection

"We Want to Change the World"

NASA, Google, Apple?

All you need is someone from Microsoft and you've got representatives of all four horsemen

Maybe their mission statement should be "We want to rule the world" or "We want to copyright the world". This all sounds incredibly pretentious and self serving.

Apple spews Judas Phone signal bar 'fix' to world+dog

Shooting themselves in the foot

Even when they try to rationalise it, they fail

"Some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design..."

So a non-faulty antenna design only drops 2-3 bars when held? How exactly is that non-faulty?

"Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place."

So when they grip their phones, the bars suddenly start reading true? Oh that explains everything, instead of IOS4.0.1 you just should have updated the firmware flaf for isHeld() to ON aways...problem solved (hmm..maybe that is IOS 4.0.1?)

Complete and utter load of BS from the minions of Premier Jobs becasue the party can do no wrong.

Intel boffins usher era of 'I know who you are' TV

Answer to a question no-one was asking

Considering how most of the worlds TV seems to be going digital/Cable - and all the various set top boxes that will happily record your tv show for screening when you want to...who the hell actually watches TV live anymore?

In the past 6 months I've watched about 2 hours of television as it was broadcast, all the rest was recorded and viewed later. So unless the algorthim can communicate backwards through time, its pointless.

New dinosaur dubbed 'Mojoceratops' - 'over a few beers'

Thin Edge of the Wedge

Just imaging if the naming standards were open and corporate sponsorship was involved

someone could discover the iphoneraptor, the vistasaurus, or even the Dellodon

An that would even have an IT angle

For sale: Dr No's Scottish bunker complex

Naaaah

Needs a moat for Fang, my cybernetically enhanced watchshark

FLYING CAR, full hover, fairly quiet, offered to US Marines

Love the control idea but dont belive the rest of it

I thought the control system idea was actually quite bright and the kinda thing you need a flying car to have. On the other hand. The new duct idea sounds retarded - if your using wing shapes then yeah you get lift...pushing the duct outward all around, not up. And assume you make "slanty ducts" the geometry suggests more than 80% of the lift is still wasted based on the piccys.

Also, for Marine use...I can just picture it as a morale building excercise in Afghanistan, bringing back the manly sport of clay pigeon shooting to a country that has sadly been shooting everythign else for years. It could even give the marines a cool new nickname (The clay pigeons).

And last thought...cool wings...picture trying to pass that on the freeway on your way to work in the morning.

3D TV: Avatar or Ishtar?

Not for me thanks

I never sit there goggle eyed staring at the TV, I'm always reading an occasional page out of a book, or using a notepad to write stuff (aTV in the background helps me think) or looking at teh otehr people in the room getting munchies, lots of stuff . 3DTV as it currently stands means just watching TV, that might be TV makers and channels Nirvana but it shows a complete disconnect for how people use the device (I don't know anyone where the whole family stops and watches TV without doing anything else).

An RJ-45 port and an internal hard disk could have potential, but I think thats crippled too becasue I don't think unlimited broadband is going to survive the next few years and I don't think any country has the network backbone to support the level of downloads youd get if internet connected TV was ubiquitous.

So I think both technologys are heading for the niche.

Redback spiders provoke BAE lock-down

OK So this means

BAE systems have abandoned their "really big slipper" project ?

How many million did that cost teh government?

NASA: Civilization will end in 2013 (possibly)

Scare Tactics

What do all those previous examples have in common? The effected long metal lines which are vulnerable to this thing.

Sattelites loosing comms...yes

Radio and TVdisruptions...Likely

iPads turning into chalk slates..maybe

Power outages..could be (depends on lots of variables)

Computers jumping up and down and emitting smoke..unlikely

All the digital watches in the world suddenly having their faces read "DOOM" .. nah

But an article saying "TV's going to be crappy and GPS users will be driving into lakes" isn't very interesting (or anything we didn't already know). I'd love to see a scientific prediction these days that wasn't over the top.

Apple iPad

wheres....

The "I just don't give a crap" voting button

'Dossiers on enemies' found in Italian Scientology raid

Considering all the other tortured parallels

Catholocism is like Google, they claim to do no evil and most of their workers believe it even if no-one else does

Scientology is like Apple, full of buzzwords, arbitary decisions and a continual need to prove your part of the cult.

So whose Microsoft?

Oz customs search lappies and mobes for smut

One good thing

There is no way these loons are going to survive the next election, if it isn't wacko green carbon schemes or Kill-The-Homeowner insulation initiatives, its their continuing attempts to reach civil liberties parity with China and North Korea

Luke Skywalker to helm movie of own comic, Black Pearl

Mark Hamils other Space Opera

He also starred in the later Wing Commander games cutscenes, which to me showed how well he could act as he had to do the same scene several times with different dialog/emotions depending on how the story was going (In an interview about it he mentioned the shooting script for a computer game was about 3 times the size of any movie script he ever did).

His voiceovers of the Joker were stunningly good.

Obama: We're off to Mars

Same As usual then

Its just more of the usual political rubbish. Cancel Ares with a claim of "we need new technology" and then hand 6 Billion in pork over to an aerospace industry that never seems to have to actually produce something that works- Actually 6 billion would just about keep the ISS up until 2025 and pay for crewing so maybe not that much pork, just enough to look like the whole program isn't collapsing.

Make broad statements about targets with no roadmaps and no conceivable way of doing it (At least his predecessor had at least some sort of idea about what he wanted)

Everyone wants a space program, no-one wants to pay for it, which is the kind of thinking that turned NASA into the third world bus company it is today. Want to feel good about your country claiming Mars...take Chinese citizenship now

Surplus astronaut right-sizing imminent at NASA?

What about China?

By All accounts they've got a booming (excuse the pun) manned space program - plans to reach the moon by 2020 - I'm sure they'd love some ex-NASA astronauts, they already have most of the US dollars

Google uncloaks the Nexus One

Google or apple?

Hmm

Googlephone or Applephone?

Id normally pick the lesser of two evils but with these two.......

Hard drives cop flak from .50 cal incendiary round

why just guns?

I'm surprised Vulture Centrals weapons reseach dpt did ask the tough questions with the real hardware, like how many racks can a LHC collision send into hyperspace?

'New discipline' of 'Network Science' birthed by US Army

amazing

Must be nice to get a multimillion dollar contract to reinvent facebook

Neanderthal woman could whup Schwarzenegger

so what?

Neanderthal lady may have been able to win the arm wrestle if she wasn't - whats the word? Oh yeah - EXTINCT

Simlarly the ability to throw an ironwood spear 110 yards didn't turn out to be all that useful against disease, disinterest and the occasional bit of lead poisoning.

Sure our kids would probably be healthier being sent to the communal school to live for 7 years emulating Sparta's happy training combination of starvation, abuse and buggary - but they'd probably live a longer and happier life playing nintendo and eventually becoming corporate lawyers (though probably no less evil)

Oz bottle shop falls for 'double your money' scam

I've got a sneaking suspicion thats my corner bottle shop

I think I'll go over there tomorrow and see if they'd like to help my cousin get is 5 MILLION DOLLARS (5,000,000) out of that Nigerian Savings and Loan

Linus calls Linux 'bloated and huge'

The first thing I always do

Is recompile the kernel to be modular and only use the hardware I've got installed..mind you, the source is now HUUUUGE but the source is supposed to cover everything it's installed on, and most (not all) of the main distros run a big monolithic kernal to make sure you don't have any problems at install.

NetApp's missing bits: Don't we need a switch infrastructure?

So havn't heard of OnTap 8 in GX mode then?

Netapps next big version (OnTap 8) will finally integrate technology they bought from Spinaker storage which is a proper clusered stoage fabric. They are already installing NFS only solutions like this called OnTap GX but OnTap 8.x will also have CIFS and LUN's.

They are also providing switched multisite clusters (metrocluster)

Epic fail for this whole article

Outlook (finally) coming to the Mac

But will it have Word?

Or will Macs be the only place where Microsoft can sell Word?

FCC barks at Apple for silencing Google Voice

I'm so confused about how to take this

Option 1 - Apple deserved a dammed good kicking for their many dubious practices and schilling for AT&T

Option 2 - Is the FCC acting out of altruism or is it becasue theres so many ex-google execs in the US government the two are indestinguishable

Someone help me figure who's the bad guy here!

Amazon Kindle doomed to repeat Big Brother moment

Right system wrong use

I can see such a can of worms in this story.

Amazon showing the have the ability to "unpublish" a book whenever they want.

Multiple people that claim to be the rights holders (or know the copyright status of a book) - showing how hard it is to work out what is in public domain these days

Amazon making grandious statements that they can't possibly keep.

All of this just proves to me that Kindle should never ever be used for books, or if it is, should have a locked in ability not to allow it to be modified.

On the other hand...if they can unpublish content, then they can republish it, that would be erfect for things like newspapers and magazines...buy a subscription for a year, and get new issues downloaded automatically over the old one..include a function to allow users to prevent specific articles from undeleting when the next issue comes along and you'd actually have a product thats good for something.

Kindle just seems like a good idea that isn't goign to work becasue Amazon looks at it and thinks "BOOKS"

NASA data shows 'dramatically' thinned Arctic ice

And the warmup for Copenhagen begins

A nice non-announcement from NASA...

Question...if the arctic ice retreated to its smallest coverage last year, how much multiyear ice were they expecting to see this year?

This is just another bit of scary noise like those numbnuts earlier in the year who tried to walk to the North pole dragging a ground radar and wern't expecting it to be so cold.

I notice they don't really say a lot about the current ice extent being larger than last year its all "ooo we found a datapoint thats scary and will get us lots of money"

Warmtards!

Orange UK exiles Firefox from call centres

Two issues here

The first one is if Orange shouldn't be moving their browser version forward a little..obviously yes.

The other one is if a Enterprise with a standard build should be allowing users to install any dammed thing they please that they download from the internet just becasue they want to...NO!

I've done desktop support in an enterprise and that experience has shown me that the two things you find on a problem PC 90% of the time are a different browser and google toolbar - its not the users PC, if they can't respect the build what makes you think their going to respect things like data privicy? Don't fine them, sack them

Google News serves up...Wikipedia links

Definitive infromation source

The weird thing is kids these days have mostly had it hammerred into them not to use wikipedia as a source of information, but adults seem to be more and more willing to quote wikipedia as a definitive source becasue "I googled it and this is what I found".

just another set of potholes in the information superhighway.

Oh..can wikipedia really be considered web 2.0? I mean its been around for a couple of years, its users have a smug sense of self-stroking satisfaction, and it still hasn't tuned a buck..thats only 2 of the three criteria I use to pick webtard sites (no money but overvalued, users handstroking each other, destined to fall apart in 18 months)

Blade Runner house yours for $15m

"My Father Designed homes to be lived in"

Obviously he wasn't designing homes to be structurally sound.

Paris becasue like all FLW's creations, beautiful to look at, but dosn't work outside parties

Dinosaurs actually slimmer than we thought, say boffins

Oh great

So the velociraptors were event faster and jumped higher, and the T-Rexs could outrun a range rover...note that slimmer dosn't mean less teeth.

Odd for Americans to be putting their dinosaurs on a diet though (Cheese hadn't been invented?)

Don't call me Ishmael

It all depends how many you've got

Trust me, afer the first 100 servers it all gets a bit too much and you actually start naming them to a format, for instance

What they do (4 letters)

their address (3 digits plus three letters for the city address)

their country (2 Letters...thank you international naming standards)

a number (2-3 digits to tell them apart from all the other servers doing the same thing at teh same site)

so your IIS Webserver at 233 Marmaduke St Swindon, UK being the 3rd IIS server you've installed is called WEBS233MSSUK03

F-22 may live on: Cheap secondhand Eurofighters on offer

Good, cheap tested

I'm amazed the Russians arn't in their undercutting everyone with SU-31's, true the export version was kinda downgraded but a deal for the proper version + weapons, which is a mature product that does everything, and has multiple basic frame varients from Carrier Jet to 2 seat strike aircaft. Its also been flown for multiple years so buyers can see a proven maintanence and support stream, unlike the F-22 Hanger Queen, the Eurofighter "we cant do that yet" or the F-35 "exists on paper"

The only thing it isn't that great on is STOL/VTOL which is probably going to be the new sexy word in he industry once the F-35 marketing machine gets its boots on.

'Alien' lifeform wakened from 120,000 year Arctic slumber

Just to be perfectly clear

We have made sure that the ultra small microorganism isn't a bunch of deadly alien nanomachines programmed to convert the entire planet to grey goo havn't we?

no?

I was afraid of that!

Scotland welcomes back wild beaver

Scottish Beaver Trial project manager

Wouldn't you just love to introduce yourself in a highland pub with THAT as your job title (and on your business cards)